Beach Babies & Gremlins

The Beach Babies are done! This is one of those paintings that I could sit and tweak until the cows came home but I think it's time to stop. I don't want it to begin looking overworked, overwrought, over-thought, etc. I hope it shows up correctly on screen. I'm still fooling around with my new monitor, trying to calibrate the colors, contrast, etc. Umm...looks like the colors of the water & sand are off on my screen but the babies look pretty accurate. I just wish I could know what my visitors are seeing.

Note: I swear...I have a gremlin visiting. I have had more things go wrong in the last few weeks, all mechanical in nature. The most recent 'happenings'...my computer mouse died. No big deal, right? Then the new one malfunctioned a day after I bought it and also had to be replaced. Two days later my computer monitor gave up the ghost. Fortunately my oldest son came to my rescue and found a great deal on a 19" flat screen to take the place of my poor little 15". All this made me nervous enough to call a local plumbing & heating contractor to come inspect my furnace as it's getting old and with winter coming that's one thing I can not live without. He'll be here next week and hopefully the news won't be too bad. Last night I took the time to sketch what I imagine my gremlin looks like. Nothing terribly threatening, just up to no good, throwing his wrench into things.

Negative Painting ala Linda Kemp

I've been finding myself at a loss for inspiration recently so I grabbed a book I purchased a few years ago titled Painting Outside The Lines by Linda Kemp.

I was (and still am) very much fascinated by her approach to landscape painting. It's like nothing I've ever seen before and I'm finding it's extremely tricky to accomplish. Linda doesn't stretch her paper or even use tape to secure it to a board. She thoroughly wets both sides of a piece of #140 CP watercolor paper with clear water and lays it on a sheet of Plexi glass. The paper is held in place by the tension of the water against the Plexi and also by the sizing on the paper itself. She recommends drying your painting on a wooden board after completion but I left mine on the plexi and it dried nice and flat without sticking to the glass.

In her book she illustrates some simple compositional tips, how to create the desired mood you wish to convey in your painting and also includes some simple step-by-step demos on how to apply the paint. Learning to think in the negative, meaning to focus on the shapes around an object rather than the object itself, is quite another matter. Looks easy but trust me...it's not! It requires a shift in our normal way of looking at things. This may come more easily to some than others. I found I had to continually step back and look at my painting to get my bearings, so to speak, but I feel if I continue to pursue this method of painting it will eventually become natural.

Mushies~ Finished & Framed

It's interesting what can be done with palette muck so don't waste it! I took the liberty of matting and framing this one online just to see how it would look. I chose a dark wood frame so it doesn't show up well on the blog.

'shrooms

This is a little project I started to use up leftover paint from my landscape and an odd size piece of 300# CP w/c paper. I think morel mushrooms are fascinating little fungi. They grow wild in the woods around here in Spring, can be elusive, have a taste like no other mushroom and are coveted by gourmet restaurants. Serious morel hunters have their secret places they hunt and never divulge the locations. I have fond memories of foraging through the woods, hunting them with my Dad. The first one is always the hardest to spot but once you've found it suddenly they seem to appear everywhere, almost like magic.

Maine Coon Kitten~WIP 3

I went as far as I could on the kitten before adding the background. I'd like some of the fur on the ears and head to extend over the background color so it was time to decide exactly what kind of a background suited this fella. I did a little research on Maine Coon cats and learned that their coats have evolved to accomodate cold weather conditions. I decided to create a winter-like setting by mixing up some winter colors, in this case Payne's grey with FUB, and doing a wash which turned into more of a controlled pour. I tilted my board on a 45° angle and did the left side first with the painting turned upside down. When that was dry I did the same thing on the right side with the board right side up so as not to disturb the paint on the kitten. I threw a bit of salt on while the paint was still wet to add some snowflakes and Voila! Windy winter sky. The results are subtle and not as grey as they appear in the image.

In my last post I mentioned that I wanted to increase some of the values, mostly on the stripes in the fur. There's obviously some overkill in a few areas so I will have to adjust the other stripes accordingly. There's work left to do on the ears and head and some tweaking to do on the exterior of the body.